


Helpless

by Brumeier



Series: That McShep Boy [23]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Established Relationship, Family Feels, Hospitalization, Illnesses, Kid Fic, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 11:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9383396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: LJ Comment Fic for Love prompt:Stargate Multiverse, Any, Having a child is living with your heart outside your chest.In which Rodney and John have to deal with AJ being rushed to the infirmary.





	

_McKay, you need to get to the infirmary. Now._

Rodney didn’t ask for clarification, he just dropped everything and ran for the nearest transporter with his heart in his throat. John’s voice had been clipped and anxious, a tone Rodney hadn’t heard since the last Wraith-are-coming incursion.

Countless scenarios ran through his head: head injury, loss of a limb, nanite infection, near drowning…there were so many ways the worst could’ve happened. Rodney had tried to make Atlantis safer for all the kids there were living there now, but he couldn’t anticipate everything no matter how hard he tried.

John was waiting for him outside the infirmary, pale and stiff, and Rodney skidded to a stop a few feet away. He couldn’t catch his breath all of a sudden.

He was too late. He knew it.

“He’s dead,” Rodney said, his own voice ringing hollowly in his ears. His biggest fear, come to pass. And he hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been there.

John was on him in a second, shaking him. “No! Rodney, no. He’s not. I promise he’s not.”

“What? I don’t…what happened?”

“I was having lunch with him at school today, remember? And I got there, and everything was fine, and the next thing I knew he was having a seizure.”

Rodney wrapped his arms around John, felt him shaking. “A seizure? He had a seizure? What does Carson say?”

“He’s running tests,” John said, his voice muffled because he had his face pressed into the side of Rodney’s neck.

“Okay. That’s okay. A seizure doesn’t have to be bad. It could just be he has a high fever. He sounded a little stuffy this morning. Or it could be low blood sugar, or low blood sodium.”

Rodney walked John backwards to the cluster of chairs in the waiting area outside the infirmary. He wanted to be in there, wanted to see his son and reassure himself that AJ was still alive, but he knew better than to distract Carson. Besides, the ban was still on and Marie would run him out on a rail.

John dropped down into a chair and rubbed his hands over his face. “Carson will figure it out.”

Rodney sat next to him and rubbed his hand up and down John’s leg. “Of course he will.”

He didn’t vocalize the other things that could bring on a seizure, like brain bleeds or rare diseases or epilepsy, but he was thinking them. What if AJ suffered brain trauma? He was such a bright, happy boy. What if…?

The infirmary doors opened and Marie beckoned them in. “You can see him now,” she said in a hushed voice.

Rodney blindly reached for John’s hand when he saw AJ in the bed. He’d recently had a growth spurt, on the heels of his twelfth birthday, but right at that moment he looked so small. There was an oxygen mask strapped to his face, and a pulse oximeter on his finger, and electrodes on his head connected to a monitor.

“He’s sleeping,” Carson assured them. He pulled the curtain partway closed for privacy. “Poor lad’s exhausted. Thankfully the seizures have stopped on their own.”

“Seizures? Plural?” _Brain damage_ , Rodney thought in despair.

“After the first, they were non-convulsive,” Carson explained. “His brain activity is normal, Rodney. No sign of any damage. He was lucid and speaking clearly before he fell asleep.”

John gave Rodney’s hand a squeeze. “Why did this happen?”

“I’m still running tests,” Carson said, apologetic. “I’ve ruled out meningitis, and brain hematomas. He’s not feverish. As far as I can determine, the lad is in perfect health.”

“His blood sugar,” Rodney started to say, but Carson held up a preemptory hand.

“Normal. Everything so far has come up normal.”

“Could it be something environmental?” John asked. “Something he came in contact with?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out.”

“Okay. Here’s what we need to do,” John said. He shed his anxious parent persona and slipped into mission leader mode. “We need to retrace AJ’s steps, starting from the time he got up this morning until I met him for lunch. Check everything and everyone he came in contact with.”

Rodney nodded. “That’s a good idea. Get Lorne to help, he knows everything that goes on around here. I can’t…John, I have to be here.”

“You keep watch,” John said.

“Go find out what did this. I’ll let you know if anything changes.” He knew John needed to act, needed to feel like he was doing something productive to help their son. Just as Rodney knew that he couldn’t leaving AJ’s side. “I’ve got his six.”

“I’ll just nip off and get you a chair,” Carson said.

John pressed a kiss to AJ’s cheek. “We’ll figure this out.”

“He’ll be fine.” Rodney reluctantly let go of John’s hand. “Go. Find something.”

Rodney got a kiss too, and then John was striding purposefully out of the infirmary, already on the line with his 2IC. Carson brought a chair, and gave Rodney’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Poppa’s here.” Rodney pulled the chair close to the bed, and held his son’s hand between his own. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

*o*o*o*

The culprit, it turned out, was a very small Ancient artefact that one of AJ’s kleptomaniac classmates had snuck out of the labs. Whatever it was originally intended for, all it did now was misfire electric impulses, which had caused AJ’s seizures.

Protocols were getting revamped at the earliest opportunity, and Rodney was already preparing an epic rant for the staff meeting he’d scheduled for the following day. Someone was getting reassigned to saline tank maintenance and waste removal for a month, as soon as Rodney determined who was at fault.

“He could’ve died.”

“But he didn’t,” John said softly. 

They stood in the doorway of AJ’s room, watching him play a complicated Athosian board game with Torren. The boy had bounced back quickly, only spending one night in the infirmary, but he’d scared years off Rodney’s life.

“You know, I always thought that quote was schmaltzy.”

John slung his arm around Rodney’s hip. “What quote?”

“That thing about living with your heart outside your chest when you have kids. I always thought it was some dumb thing that soccer moms said.” Rodney rubbed a hand over his sternum. “But if anything happened to him…I don’t know, John. I couldn’t take it.”

“That makes two of us, buddy,” John said. “And I really don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

In his room AJ whooped, arms raised over his head. “I won! Ha! I keep tellin’ ya, TJ, it’s brains over brawn every time!”

Rodney couldn’t help grinning. “That’s my boy.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** As always, my medical information was very probably wrongfully snagged from the interwebs.


End file.
